Highlights

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The EU Parliament voted to pass a resolution this week to introduce an EU anti-tax avoidance directive, reflecting the work of the OECD’s base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project and recommendations of the Parliament made at the end of last year. The directive contains proposals on key areas often connected with aggressive tax planning, and also defines terms such as permanent establishment, tax havens, patent boxes and minimum economic substance that have often been open to interpretation amongst Member States.

Ahead of the vote, the EU released figures on corporate taxation and tax avoidance across the EU, with further details on the Parliament’s proposals. The directive will now need to be approved unanimously by Member States before it can go into effect.

As well as the proposals set forward by the Parliament, MEPs were in favour of a number of other measures to tackle tax avoidance, including:

An EU blacklist of tax havens, and sanctions against uncooperative jurisdictions;